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The Last Good Time
The lives of two elderly men who survive on their memories of the "good old days" are irrevocably altered by the arrival of a pregnant young lady who seeks shelter with them
- GenresFiction
227 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
65 people want to read
About the author
Richard Bausch
92 books216 followersAn acknowledged master of the short story form, Richard Bausch's work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Narrative, Gentleman's Quarterly. Playboy, The Southern Review, New Stories From the South, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize Stories; and they have been widely anthologized, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story and The Vintage Book of the Contemporary American Short Story.
Richard Bausch is the author of eleven novels and eight collections of stories, including the novels Rebel Powers, Violence, Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America And All The Ships At Sea, In The Night Season, Hello To The Cannibals, Thanksgiving Night, and Peace; and the story collections Spirits, The Fireman's Wife, Rare & Endangered Species, Someone To Watch Over Me, The Stories of Richard Bausch, Wives & Lovers, and most recently released Something Is Out There. His novel The Last Good Time was made into a feature-length film.
He has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and the 2013 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence . He has been a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers since 1996. In 1999 he signed on as co-editor, with RV Cassill, of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction; since Cassill's passing in 2002, Bausch is the sole editor of that prestigious anthology. Richard Bausch teaches Creative Writing at Chapman University in Southern California
Richard Bausch is the author of eleven novels and eight collections of stories, including the novels Rebel Powers, Violence, Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America And All The Ships At Sea, In The Night Season, Hello To The Cannibals, Thanksgiving Night, and Peace; and the story collections Spirits, The Fireman's Wife, Rare & Endangered Species, Someone To Watch Over Me, The Stories of Richard Bausch, Wives & Lovers, and most recently released Something Is Out There. His novel The Last Good Time was made into a feature-length film.
He has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and the 2013 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence . He has been a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers since 1996. In 1999 he signed on as co-editor, with RV Cassill, of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction; since Cassill's passing in 2002, Bausch is the sole editor of that prestigious anthology. Richard Bausch teaches Creative Writing at Chapman University in Southern California
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 18, 2024
This isn't the first time I have demanded the resurgence of an author's career, and it won't be the last, but before I promote Richard Bausch's work and recommend that you spring to your senses immediately and read this book, I'd like to have a quick chat with you first about bathtub sex.
Bathtub sex is an urban legend. It's nonsense. Even in a big, fancy, oval shaped bathtub like the one I currently own, it is only the proper place for one person, some bath salts, and some excellent poetry or prose. Any other activities that you may have dreamed up in your youth as taking place in a bathtub are fantastical.
The author was not yet 40 when he wrote the bathtub scene in this novel, so I can only assume that he was still holding on to some sexy fantasies about what dreams may rub a dub dub in a tub. So, when his 24-year-old female character and his 70+ male character (another topic, altogether, by the way), climb into a bathtub, naked, together, on page 59 and the woman instructs the man to “lay back” and get comfortable as she then “maneuver[s] herself so that she could take him into her mouth,” I was over here with a virtual red Sharpie pen, writing some caustic shit in the margins.
Have I mentioned that the woman was pregnant and the man was tall and old? As he's moaning and groaning from his special rinse in the bath, I could only wonder. . . is there a SNORKEL involved? SCUBA gear? Did this woman go immediately to the chiropractor on Monday?
I was always really bad at geometry, but even I can grasp that certain angles just aren't right. (Pun intended).
It was a bad move, this scene, and Mr. Bausch almost ended our new relationship at appetizers. . . but I was captivated, already, by his keen sense of conversation and his outstanding knack at dialogue.
Then, at page 75, he had me and kept me:
The truth was that in all the years of their marriage he had felt that she withheld something from him. He had spent his energy trying to reach her where she secretly was, and wound up feeling starved, somehow, never quite sated or even, really, loved.
This brilliant novel starts with PRETENSE and ends with THE TRUTH. "This is the only way I know how to love someone," she would say.
The dialogue is, hands down, some of the best I've ever encountered, and the themes of love, marriage, death, and dying are explored to the point of brutal honesty, and prompted some shameless blubbering from me.
Richard Bausch is still banging it out, teaching and writing, and he is an old man now, but he wasn't when he published this, in 1984. His grasp of aging feels prescient to me.
I'm almost overcome with melancholy right now, thinking of the rare “bromance” that takes place in these pages, between the two aging men. Mr. Bausch is right: it is so often our friendships that field us through the fading façades of our lives.
Argh. Ugh. The book hangover comes.
Bathtub sex is an urban legend. It's nonsense. Even in a big, fancy, oval shaped bathtub like the one I currently own, it is only the proper place for one person, some bath salts, and some excellent poetry or prose. Any other activities that you may have dreamed up in your youth as taking place in a bathtub are fantastical.
The author was not yet 40 when he wrote the bathtub scene in this novel, so I can only assume that he was still holding on to some sexy fantasies about what dreams may rub a dub dub in a tub. So, when his 24-year-old female character and his 70+ male character (another topic, altogether, by the way), climb into a bathtub, naked, together, on page 59 and the woman instructs the man to “lay back” and get comfortable as she then “maneuver[s] herself so that she could take him into her mouth,” I was over here with a virtual red Sharpie pen, writing some caustic shit in the margins.
Have I mentioned that the woman was pregnant and the man was tall and old? As he's moaning and groaning from his special rinse in the bath, I could only wonder. . . is there a SNORKEL involved? SCUBA gear? Did this woman go immediately to the chiropractor on Monday?
I was always really bad at geometry, but even I can grasp that certain angles just aren't right. (Pun intended).
It was a bad move, this scene, and Mr. Bausch almost ended our new relationship at appetizers. . . but I was captivated, already, by his keen sense of conversation and his outstanding knack at dialogue.
Then, at page 75, he had me and kept me:
The truth was that in all the years of their marriage he had felt that she withheld something from him. He had spent his energy trying to reach her where she secretly was, and wound up feeling starved, somehow, never quite sated or even, really, loved.
This brilliant novel starts with PRETENSE and ends with THE TRUTH. "This is the only way I know how to love someone," she would say.
The dialogue is, hands down, some of the best I've ever encountered, and the themes of love, marriage, death, and dying are explored to the point of brutal honesty, and prompted some shameless blubbering from me.
Richard Bausch is still banging it out, teaching and writing, and he is an old man now, but he wasn't when he published this, in 1984. His grasp of aging feels prescient to me.
I'm almost overcome with melancholy right now, thinking of the rare “bromance” that takes place in these pages, between the two aging men. Mr. Bausch is right: it is so often our friendships that field us through the fading façades of our lives.
Argh. Ugh. The book hangover comes.
August 17, 2008
One of the most touching and truthful stories I have ever read. A story about all different kinds of loves, in youth, maturity and and old age. Three main characters linked together by their need for affection and understanding.
January 18, 2022
I bought this book at a used bookshop in Reston, and it looked sentimental. This book is seriously weird, but I loved it so much. It’s based around an old man who is awkward and can not process emotions well. It’s so good. I didn’t cry at it, but it is super sad. Makes me scared to get old. I highlighted a lot of good quotes in this book which is why it gets 4 stars over 3.
December 4, 2020
i don't fully understand
June 26, 2025
I notice Richard Bausch is still alive and kicking at 80. Just in case he looks at Goodreads, and/or gives a damn about what I say, I will try to be kind.
The Story: so implausible on so many levels. Why would some strange girl of 24 go into a man of 75's apartment? Then start kissing and screwing him? I felt like it was Bausch projecting his own fantasies on how he wanted his OWN life to be when he became old. Yuck. And how and why did the old man (Edward) become such "great old friends" with the other old man (Arthur) in the story? I felt nothing for either of the characters because I didn't know them. I could never figure out who they were, what they looked like, etc. In fact, the old man who the main character was visiting - I thought he was an African American until the story was almost over and they said something about his family from Ukraine? Their dialogue was just weird between two men. Then I also felt like there was so much time spent about the friend's internal thoughts that maybe HE was the main character?
The Writing: Okay, good news is Bausch's writing improved after this novel, which was one of his earlier books. (I read another one of his books, "Mrs. Field's Daughter", which was better). But all the flashbacks and internal thoughts of thinking back and daydream sequences - awful. And the dialogue was often brutal to get through. "I hope we are still friends", "yea, we're still friends", "but are we really friends", "I guess that's what everyone says", "friends are important, you know", "that's what they say". Those aren't actual quotes, but that's how tedious 90% of the dialogue was.
I guess the most frustrating piece is that there was no plot. I kept waiting for the story to move forward. I needed something of substance to happen. It's just a lot of thinking about the snow and old age. And more thinking. And more snow. And more thinking.
Two stars for Bausch's ability to capture some authentic moments of dementia with "Ida" and Edward Cakes' irritation for the neighbor nurses.
The Story: so implausible on so many levels. Why would some strange girl of 24 go into a man of 75's apartment? Then start kissing and screwing him? I felt like it was Bausch projecting his own fantasies on how he wanted his OWN life to be when he became old. Yuck. And how and why did the old man (Edward) become such "great old friends" with the other old man (Arthur) in the story? I felt nothing for either of the characters because I didn't know them. I could never figure out who they were, what they looked like, etc. In fact, the old man who the main character was visiting - I thought he was an African American until the story was almost over and they said something about his family from Ukraine? Their dialogue was just weird between two men. Then I also felt like there was so much time spent about the friend's internal thoughts that maybe HE was the main character?
The Writing: Okay, good news is Bausch's writing improved after this novel, which was one of his earlier books. (I read another one of his books, "Mrs. Field's Daughter", which was better). But all the flashbacks and internal thoughts of thinking back and daydream sequences - awful. And the dialogue was often brutal to get through. "I hope we are still friends", "yea, we're still friends", "but are we really friends", "I guess that's what everyone says", "friends are important, you know", "that's what they say". Those aren't actual quotes, but that's how tedious 90% of the dialogue was.
I guess the most frustrating piece is that there was no plot. I kept waiting for the story to move forward. I needed something of substance to happen. It's just a lot of thinking about the snow and old age. And more thinking. And more snow. And more thinking.
Two stars for Bausch's ability to capture some authentic moments of dementia with "Ida" and Edward Cakes' irritation for the neighbor nurses.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews